Police beat: Fake tickets, a DUI and a dog in trouble

Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police and the Pierce County Sheriff’s office.

Nov. 15: The old-school warning against con artists is caveat emptor, as in “buyer beware.”

The modern version, less elegant, might be, “don’t buy tickets on Craigslist.”

The dispatch call came from a victim reporting a possible fraud. Two Tacoma officers drove to Jane Clark Park and found a man holding a set of worthless tickets and a woman sitting on the ground.

The man was 34. He said he was looking for tickets to an ice show in Kent and found a seller on Craigslist. He agreed to meet up for the sale and paid the woman $250. He said the woman gave him a printout of the tickets and a phone number to call for instructions on how to pick them up.

The man said he called the number and got nowhere. The person on the other end of the line didn’t know what he was talking about.

The man created a new Craigslist account, found the ticket listing and arranged another buy — this time with an eye toward catching the con artist. He arranged a meeting at the park.

The woman arrived. The man recognized her and called her out, he said. She tried to leave. He stopped her and told her he was calling police.

Officers spoke to the woman. She was 26. She said she got the “confirmation letter” from a friend who lived nearby. She had no contact information for the friend. She said she may have been scammed, too.

Her story “jumped around,” the report states. She said she bought the tickets for $100. She said her father was dying. She couldn’t explain the ticket confirmation process.

Officers booked her into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of third-degree theft.

Nov. 15: Alcohol is known to impair common sense, but there are degrees of stupid.

The officer watched the 1997 Chevrolet pickup spinning doughnuts in a parking lot near the 8000 block of Pacific Avenue. It was 1:45 a.m.

The truck fishtailed out of the parking lot and sailed down the road. The officer followed. The truck headed south, rolling at 60, the officer guessed. The officer flicked lights and the siren and pulled the truck over.

The driver was 24. Did he know why he was being stopped?

“Because of my speed,” the man said.

A marijuana pipe sat in the console cup holder between the seats. Two empty beer cans — Rainier — clattered on the passenger floorboard.

Had the man been drinking?

Yes — five or six beers, he said. He’d been watching a televised fight at a friend’s house. He said he wasn’t impaired. He admitted smoking weed as well.

The officer found another empty Rainier can on the passenger seat and a half-empty case of beer in the back.

The man couldn’t stand on one leg. He failed the heel-to-toe test. He agreed to a breath test, and blew .18 and .17, twice the legal driving limit of .08. The officer booked him into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of drunken driving.

Nov. 16: The dispatch call said a man was trying to shoot a dog. The sheriff’s deputy picked it up and drove to the 9900 block of Yakima Avenue South.

He found a group of firefighters surrounding an older woman sitting on the ground. She was wet and shaking. A man and a woman stood nearby with a pit bull, leashed to a chain link fence.

The firefighters said they had responded to a report of a dog mauling, but the woman had no injuries; the dog had knocked her down. As they tended to her, a man approached carrying a gun and said he intended to shoot the dog. The man had left in a blue minivan.

One firefighter looked up.

“That’s him coming back,” he said.

The deputy saw the minivan backing out of a driveway. It drove toward the fire engine and the patrol car and stopped. A man stepped out. He was 66.

The deputy drew his gun and told the man to stop. The man cursed and kept coming. The deputy pulled a stun gun and fired a bolt at the man, but the darts hit his heavy coat and had no effect. The man kept coming and cursing.

The deputy fired another bolt, again with no effect. He rushed forward and knocked the man down.

A short struggle followed. A firefighter joined in. Soon, the man was cuffed.

The deputy spoke to the woman on the ground. She said the man was her husband. She said they had had problems with the dog in the past. She said her husband suffered from post-traumatic stress. She was tired and confused, the report states, and gave little detail about the dog attack.

The man and the woman nearby — a mother and her son — said they had heard the woman calling for help, rushed outside and saw her struggling with the dog. They pepper-sprayed the animal, they said, and leashed it to the fence.

The deputy spoke to the older man one more time. The man cursed when he was told he was under arrest and said this wasn’t a TV show. The deputy booked him into the Pierce County Jail on suspicion of resisting arrest and obstructing a law enforcement officer.

This story was originally published November 20, 2015 at 8:21 AM with the headline "Police beat: Fake tickets, a DUI and a dog in trouble."